Pages

Sunday, January 23, 2011

I keep telling myself that someday, I will make it to DC for the March for Life. I suppose next year I should stop making excuses and actually get on the bus. But for this year, I'll dedicated my blog to the cause for the day. I was surprised that a google search for "blog for life" or "pro-life blog link up" yielded few results. There is however a NARAL sponsored "Pro-Choice Blog Day," and a responding pro-life "Ask them what they mean by choice?" I have to admit that the images and descriptions used by both slightly uneased me, but I am still going to be using those as a launching point to my post.

This year, NARAL's "Pro-Choice Blog Day," theme question was, Given the anti-choice gains in the states and Congress, are you concerned about choice in 2011? I think their question is a good place for me to start, because, frankly, what "anti-choice" gains in Congress do they expect their readers and writers to respond to. The allowance for abortion funding through federal tax dollars in the new health care bill? The election of one of the most pro-choice Presidents in our nation's history? As a pro-life person, I would like to see all these pro-life victories they are lamenting, so that I can celebrate them.

Since the only pro-life victories I could think of were the elections of Scott Brown and Kelly Ayotte, and I admittedly used google today to help me find the latter, I am going to turn NARAL's question against them and answer my own -- Given the anti-life gains in the states and Congress, are you concerned about life (and choice) in 2011?

In a word, yes. I am concerned about both life and choice in 2011. I am concerned that every time I read the news, I see life at risk. Whether it is in pro-abortion legislation, teenage and college suicides, murders or people being sentenced to capital punishment, it seems that life is threatened everywhere I look.

I am also however worried about choice. I am worried about a world, where a woman believes abortion is her best choice. I am worried about a world where people believe allowing their child to die is a better option than allowing her to live. I am worried about a world where people believe they are preventing their child pain by killing it, instead of bringing it in to a "bad," situation. I am worried about a world where people who believe in God, have a personal opposition to abortion, and generally seem like good people, can still say that abortion should be a choice for others. Recently my grandmother was telling me how in her childhood no one ever talked or really thought about abortion, the idea was simply unfathomable. They never thought a world where abortion would be available legally, in clean clinics with trained medical personnel would exist. And that is what worries me most, a world where abortion has become not simply a "choice," but a true "option," that people weigh equally with others and consider just as legitimately as others.

Monday, January 3, 2011

No, I didn't enter the New Year's Eve lottery. The winners are my patron saints for 2011! As I began reading in the Christian and Catholic blog-o-sphere recently I have come across many individuals who choose an annual patron saint for themselves and/or their family. As I continue along life's journey, and enter into 2011 with the goal of more actively discerning God's path for my life, I decided choosing a patron saint for the year was an excellent aim. Having made the decision not to continue pursuing a classroom teaching, I am entering 2011 trying to decide what I should pursue. I will admit there is marked frustration in me right now, as I wonder if my education - specifically the year of study aimed directly at becoming an educator - is going to waste. It is not that I doubt my decision, but that I am frustrated with it. I do not know what I want to do with my education. I do, however, know what I want to do with my life. I want to use my life to serve God by serving His people. I want to work until Christ is formed in me and visible in me, as I serve others as He did. I want to be like Mary who said yes to God. I am not as worried about what I will do with my education, as I am about what I will do with my life.

The first saint who was "written on my heart," so to speak, was St. Teresa of Avila, who seems to keep popping up in my prayers and readings. Then I encountered this lovely post at the blog Totus Tuus Family and decided to take the author up on her offer to prayerfully choose a patron saint for anyone who commented on her blog. I figured worst case scenario, I'd revert to my original plan of St. Teresa.

The verdict? St. Simon of Cyrene. I'll admit to some initial disappointment, I had a desire for some reason for a female saint. But in further thinking, what better saint could there be for my 2011 journey. I have finally verbalized my true desire - to serve Christ by serving others, particularly the marginalized. Could I choose a better role model than the man who served the human Christ at the time he was most in need? The man who served Christ when He himself was the marginalized.